Because RSS/Atom subscriptions as the standard for following things you like, across websites, didn't really catch on, in part because no browsers (or mobile OS

Because RSS/Atom subscriptions as the standard for following things you like, across websites, didn't really catch on, in part because no browsers (or mobile OS vendors) really championed the feature in their UX to make it better than having lots of interfaces on different sites (looking at you, Firefox—add it to the list of dropped balls). Because network effects let them pay creators more, so of course creators tend to stick around. Because people default to searching on Youtube for videos, and Youtube Search only searches Youtube, rather than being like Google Video Search. > What would a competitor need to take on them? A shitload of VC cash to burn on both data transfer / CDN buildout and paying prominent YouTubers way more than they're making you in exchange for exclusive videos (time limited would probably be fine, e.g. 1 year exclusivity). Also, maybe, integrate something like Patreon directly.